“You good?” he asked gruffly.
“I’m great,” she breathed back. Lord, she sounded like Marilyn Monroe singing “Happy Birthday” to JFK.
His hands fell away from her, and something possessive inside him growled at the absence of her heated skin. As for her, she abruptly looked too tongue-tied, and truthfully, too stubborn to thank him. He was reluctantly amused at her obstinacy. It was a quintessentially SEAL quality. Pig-headed was a term that got applied to him frequently, in fact.
He reached past her into the back of the vehicle for her pack. He slung it over his shoulder and led her over to the small plane as she stumbled along after him. He trotted up the unfolded steps and turned around, reaching a hand down to her.
“I can do this myself,” she stated.
“You didn’t leave everything you had out on the course, earlier?” he asked in disappointment. “I thought you wanted to be a SEAL.” Hell, her run time had been respectable even for a guy. Surely she hadn’t run that far, that fast, carrying that much weight, casually!
She stared at his outstretched hand for a long moment. Long enough that he wasn’t sure she would accept help from him. Of course, that had been the big ding against her in her training file. She didn’t trust men. Had trouble working in a group with others. Tended to be a loner.
But then her palm touched his, and just like that, lightning bolts zinged through his hand. They had nothing to do with resentment and everything to do with something else altogether. Jesus. All she needed was a crack of thunder to go with all that sexual lightning.
Her gaze lifted to his, pupils dilated, her normally light green eyes black and intense. They stared at each other for a second that stretched out to infinity. Awareness of her as a woman and of himself as a man streaked through him. Whoa. The moment snapped back into real time sharply, like a rubber band, with the same painful slap against his skin.
He gave a casual tug and all but launched her airborne into the plane.
“Crud, you’re strong,” she breathed under her breath.
He didn’t think she’d meant for him to hear it, but he replied, nonetheless. “All SEALs have to be.”
“I’m the first to admit that no woman will ever be as strong as a SEAL at the top of his fitness game. Not even a woman like me who’s ridiculously strong relative to most other women.”
“Then why put yourself through all of that misery?”
“Just because I won’t ever be as strong as a man doesn’t mean I’m not strong enough to do the job. Strength comes in many forms.”
She was right, of course, but he wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction of saying so. “Take a seat,” he ordered.
“No other passengers? This bird is just for me?” she asked sharply.
“Commander Perriman is in a hurry to get you out of here,” he replied.
“Yeah, I got that memo.” She sounded a shade bitter. Like it was dawning on her that she really was not going to be a SEAL. He knew the feeling. And he was definitely bitter as hell about it, too. He wasn’t about to accept the doctor’s final word that his knee would never be strong enough for him to operate on the teams, again.
He’d transformed from a scrawny, picked on kid to a Navy SEAL, hadn’t he? He could transform one, lousy busted knee into a joint strong enough to do the job. No way was he walking away from the SEALs. They were his family. His life. What the hell was he going to do with himself if he couldn’t be a special operator?
He dropped into the seat across the aisle, and Zarkos squeaked, “What are you doing?”
“You heard the commander. He told me to see to it you follow your orders.”
He realized he was massaging his right leg, just above the knee, and jerked his hand away. No weakness. No pain. His knee was fine.
Zarkos snapped, “I’m not going AWOL just because Perriman tossed me out. I’m going to be pissed off for the next several decades, but I’m not going to throw some grand tantrum over it.”
He shrugged. “I’ve got my orders.” And with that, he leaned his seat back, closed his eyes, and settled in for a nap. If she knew what was good for her, she would do the same.
Nope. She was feeling chatty, apparently. “Just how crappy an assignment is Perriman sending me to?” she demanded. “Is this punishment for my daring to try for the SEALs?”
The plane lifted off the ground and banked away from the gathering sunset to head east. Without opening his eyes, he said tersely, “SEAL Ops 101: sleep and eat whenever you get a chance to do either.” Surely, she’ already learned that one. Just how raw a recruit was she, anyway? Didn’t she know anything? God almighty, this mission was going to suck.
Thankfully, she mimicked him, reclined her seat, and went unconscious. She had to be beat. He recalled his early SEAL training, and saying it was hell on earth would not be an exaggeration. And yet, the fun for her had just begun. Not that it was going to be any better for him. Someday, somehow, he would find a way to get even with Perriman for this.
Chapter Two
‡
Trina jolted awake as the plane bumped onto a runway. It was dark outside the small window at her elbow. She was disoriented. Groggy. Airplane. Kicked out of the SEAL pipeline. Orders from Perriman. A god sent along to deliver her to Phoenix.
She peered out the windows and saw the tall, black silhouettes of trees crowding the unlit runway. Trees? In Phoenix? WTF?
She’d been to Phoenix, Arizona before. It had been a thousand degrees outside. All that grew there in the sandy desert was rocks and cacti. She peered out her window again. Not only were those trees, they looked like a mix of deciduous trees and conifers. Totally not trees that would survive the hellish heat of summer in Arizona. Not to mention the air in the plane was muggy. Humidity in Phoenix often ran in the single digits. It was warm wherever they had landed, though. And the air smelled of…plant decay.
She glanced over at Alambeaux. “Do you know where we are?”
“Yup.”
The man had the conversational skills of a caveman.
She waited for him to share, but nada. He just stared out his own window, jaw set and a grim expression on his face. “Well?” she demanded. “Where are we? This is obviously not Phoenix.”
“You always this impatient?” he asked laconically.
“Guess I am. I have this funny thing about liking to know, oh, what state I’m in.” One thing she knew for sure. This was not Arizona.
His lips twitched, but he didn’t deign to enlighten her. Apparently, he was as stubborn as his boss. Jackasses, both of ’em. Yeah, well, she could play that game, too. She’d be damned if she asked him any more questions.
The plane came to a full stop. Deep silence fell as the engines shut down. The co-pilot came back to open the rear hatch and lower the steps. She smiled flirtatiously at the guy and asked him, “Could you please tell me where we are?”
He glanced up at her in surprise. “Louisiana.”
She gaped, shocked. “How long was I asleep?”
He shrugged. “The flight took about five hours.”
If only she felt better after getting some sleep. Not that anyone in the history of aviation had ever napped comfortably in an airplane seat. She hoisted herself out of the chair, every bit as stiff and agonized as she’d expected. She felt about ninety years old. Bent over in the low-ceilinged plane, she hobbled to the exit.
She eyed the stairs warily. This could be a problem. But damned if she was going to ask Lambo, waiting impatiently at the bottom of the steps, for help, again. She made it down the first couple of steps, but her entire right leg cramped on the third step and collapsed out from under her. She pitched forward, straight into the arms of her SEAL babysitter. Again.
God damn it.
He murmured in her ear, “Do you always throw yourself at men like this?”
His low voice sent ripples of lust down her spine and vibrating deliciously through her lower abdomen before she remembered he was an ass and she hated his gu
ts. She hated all SEALs’ guts right about now.
His chest was hard, slabbed in resilient bulges of muscle, warm under the soft cotton of his black t-shirt. And he smelled good. Which ticked her off to no end. She smelled like a landfill on a hot day, but there wasn’t a thing she could do about it until she crossed paths with water and a bar of soap.
It never failed. She always ran into the hot guys when she was a total mess or being a complete dork. She was not one of those girls who managed to be pulled together, poised, and make awesome first impressions on men. Ever.
“Are you done trying to face plant?” he asked.
Crap. She was still plastered against him. She yanked free of his strong, supporting arms and forced her legs to bear her weight no matter how much they protested. The co-pilot passed her rucksack down to Lambo, and she didn’t have the strength or give-a-shit factor to take it from him. She was already out of SEAL training. She didn’t have to try to impress anyone with how tough and self-sufficient she was.
Which scared the hell out of her. Her entire life had been devoted to convincing herself and everyone around her that she was the real deal. That she could hang with the big boys. What was she supposed to do now? Trade in her combat boots for flowered dresses and aprons? Who was she supposed to be? She had no idea how to be just another girl. Knowing Commander Perriman, he’d seen to it she would be stuck in some secretarial job fit only for a girly girl, in his misogynistic estimation.
Alambeaux took off, striding toward an open-top Jeep parked at the edge of the tarmac. He limped the tiniest bit on his right leg. Had he not been moving directly away from her like that, she probably wouldn’t have spotted the subtle anomaly in his motion. Come to think of it, she’d felt a hefty metal brace on his right knee when she was pressed against him from chest to ankle. Not that a brace made him any less lethal.
She looked around the airfield, and the place was deserted. It was just a strip of asphalt in a clearing among the towering trees, not even a real airport. There were no buildings, no other vehicles, no people. If this guy was an axe murderer, he was totally going to get away with his crime.
“You coming? Or are you just gonna stand there catching flies?” he tossed over his shoulder. If she was not mistaken, his voice had taken on a slightly more southern drawl.
She hurried after him, sucking in a sharp breath as a thousand hot knives stabbed her body from every direction. He tossed her pack in the back of the Jeep and swung easily into the driver’s seat where he waited impatiently for her to catch up and climb in. She couldn’t help groaning a little as she levered her body into the vehicle, using the roll bar to help lift herself. She felt like death warmed over, for real.
“You always this creaky?” he asked.
“Not usually. Training was a little rougher than usual the past few days. No down time to rest and recover. Nothing’s wrong with me that a hot shower and a decent night’s sleep won’t fix,” she answered a little crankily.
A single chin lift was all the acknowledgement she got. At least he didn’t feel obliged to comment that if she thought PTRR was bad, she should try BUD/S proper. Whether he was showing sensitivity to her having just been thrown out of the program or he figured it went without saying, she was glad for his forbearance. Her patience was too thin right now to deal with man-snark.
He turned on the headlights and she squinted into the lighted swath, making out only a thicket of vines and brambles and more trees. “Where in Louisiana are we?” She wasn’t aware of any major naval bases in the state besides Naval Air Station New Orleans…which this emphatically was not.
“Southern Louisiana. Not close to anyplace you’ve ever heard of.”
“What’s here?”
“The next step in your career.”
“What career?” she asked sourly.
He glanced over at her, his expression inscrutable. They bumped across a sandy field and turned onto an asphalt road crowded by towering trees. Cypress, mostly. The night was noisy. Crickets and frogs and God knew what else were audible over the Jeep’s rather noisy engine.
“Why’d Perriman tell me I was going to Phoenix if your orders were to bring me to Louisiana?”
“Operation Phoenix,” was her escort’s only, and cryptic, answer.
Huh? Too torqued off at him to ask for details, she leaned back, scowling, to wait and see where he took her.
Alambeaux drove confidently, his big hands moving on the steering wheel and gearshift with the ease and precision of a racecar driver. Not that she would expect anything less of a SEAL. Bulging biceps flexed under the sleeve of his t-shirt, a sight she never got tired of. It had, in fact, been one of the best perks of the training she’d just left. The man-candy factor had been through the roof.
SEALs weren’t generally men who packed on weightlifter’s muscle. They focused on stamina and high-repetition calisthenics moving their own body weight. The muscle they packed on was lean and hard as steel. And hawt as hell.
She’d put on some hard, lean muscle of her own over the past few months of training with them. But not enough, apparently. Lost in silently delivering the rant inside her head to the icy lieutenant commander who’d thrown her out on her butt for no good reason, she wasn’t inclined to engage her taciturn babysitter in conversation.
After about a half hour, lights appeared ahead, and a sad looking strip of ramshackle buildings that might once have been a reasonably prosperous little road stop came into sight. They turned into the potholed parking lot of a one-story motel that had seen better days. Much better days.
He parked at the end farthest from the office and swung out of the Jeep, using his right hand to give his right leg a little boost. He snagged her pack before she could reach for it, and she was forced to follow him and her gear to a door whose paint was peeling back to expose rusting metal. He fished a key out of his pocket and stepped back to allow her to enter the room first.
How in the hell did he already have a key to a room in this dive? Her hackles leaped to suspicious attention along the back of her neck. “What is this?” she asked, not moving forward.
“My room. You wanted a hot shower, right?”
God, that was tempting. But in some guy’s cheap motel room? Even if he was the hottest guy she’d possibly ever laid eyes on? “I don’t know your full name or have any idea who you are. Why on earth would I go into a motel room with you in a strange town whose name I don’t even know? Why don’t you just cue up the axe murderer theme music right now?”
He shrugged. “It’s no skin off my nose if you stink. We can head out to your assignment now, if you want.”
Crud. A shower really was tempting. In the flickering red light of the busted neon sign spelling out M-O-E, he was one damned good looking man. His dark eyes were hooded, fathomless, piercing straight into her soul, as she weighed her decision. His tanned skin was smooth and taut over razor-sharp cheekbones, and he had a jaw male models would kill for. His nose had been broken before and wasn’t perfectly straight, but the slight imperfection made the perfection of the rest of his face even more pronounced. Even the hint of dark razor stubble on his jaw was hot.
He stepped inside the room, flipped on a light, and paused to adjust the thermostat. Downward, hopefully. It was a sweltering night and sticky as sin. He glanced up without warning, catching her staring at his gorgeous profile. “You coming in or not?”
“Who are you?”
“Just a guy doing a job. You can call me Ford.”
“Lambo’s your handle, then? Let me guess. I’ll bet it’s short for Lamborghini and not your name.”
“Correct.”
Hah. She’d nailed it. “You got a rank?”
“Yes.”
And, on cue, he went all caveman and didn’t share said rank with her. It irritated her enough that she refused to ask him what his rank actually was. Master Chief Asshole. That was his rank.
“With all due respect, Ford, why in the hell are you here?”
“Perr
iman didn’t tell you?” he replied a shade sharply.
“Obviously not, or I wouldn’t be asking.”
“Come in and close the door. You’re letting in mosquitoes. And if I have to be in an enclosed space with you, please take a shower. You really do stink.”
“Screw you,” she said mildly.
He held out her rucksack and she snagged it without comment as she passed by him, heading for the back of the motel room and the bathroom there. She locked the door, stripped, and turned the water on as hot as it would go. It was strange and a little disturbing knowing that a man was right outside the bathroom while she was in here, naked, like this. It wasn’t that she was a prude. Far from it. But she could still feel all those acres of yummy muscle against hers. Smell his deodorant.
No amount of vigorous scrubbing erased the feel of him off her body. And, truth be told, she wasn’t sure she wanted to forget the hyperawareness that had torn through her. It had been…amazing.
Irritated that he’d gotten under her skin so easily, she blasted the water, letting it pound her muscles until the water ran cold—which actually felt pretty good, too. Only then did she reluctantly pour the little freebie bottle of shampoo over her head and scrub her hair blessedly clean. Normally, she was a brunette, but the past few months of running around outside constantly had lightened her hair to a warm milk chocolate color with strands of gold in it. She rinsed her hair, soaped down her body, and stepped out of the shower feeling like a new woman.
She toweled off and then stared down at the filthy mess that was her clothes. There were no clean ones in her rucksack, which held only combat and survival gear. She sighed and used the bar of soap in the shower to give her tank top, cargo pants and underwear a scrub and a rinse. God. How did women in the past wash all their clothes like this? At least she didn’t have to pound hers on a rock.
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